Chapter XV: A Father and Child

"My soul blesses the Great Father every day that He has gladdened the earth with little children."—MARY HOWITT.

IT was a wonderfully mild and bright day towards the end of February. Mrs. Montmorency had gone away to dine and sleep with a friend in Edinburgh. Honor was left alone. She had plenty to do, and was not dull. All the morning, she had been busy doing little things for Mrs. Montmorency; they had had an early lunch, and Honor had accompanied her to the station directly afterwards in the brougham. Now on her way back, a sudden longing seized her, as she passed a wild bit of moor, to get out and walk. She stopped the coachman and told him to drive on without her, and then she found herself treading the dead heather and bracken underfoot, and inhaling the sweet fresh air with a keen sense of enjoyment.

Presently, she came to a little hollow surrounded by gorse bushes. It was a very desolate spot, so that she was startled to hear a small child's voice proceeding from it.

"And so you see, my dear, this is little England, a tiny weeny, little island in a big world!"

She bent forward eagerly. A child's voice was music in her ears; and this voice was a lisping, babyish one, but perfectly refined in tone.

A small girl was busily scooping out the sand in the bottom, entirely engrossed in her game. She was dressed in a little rough blue serge coat and cap. Her flaxen curls were flying in the breeze.

"Hallo!" Honor called out. "May I come down and play with you? I thought you must be a fairy at first, all away from everybody."

The child looked up at her with big blue eyes. Honor might be shy and unattractive to grown-up people. She was never so to children. There seemed a kind of understanding between them at once.

"That's exactly what I am—a fairy, only I'm called Fay by daddy. Do you know what this place is called?"

Honor slipped down the side of the hollow and sat down by the child's side.

"I should think it is Fairy's Hollow."

"You're wrong. It's the world, and I'm just making it fresh like God did once upon a time, and I'm making tiny little England first. It's got to have water round it, you know, to make it an island. Do you know if there is any sea round the corner, where I can get some?"

"I'm afraid we have no sea here. Where do you come from? Have you dropped from the clouds? Who told you that England was a tiny little place?"

"Daddy. He maked it in the sand once, but I'm going to make the whole big, big world, just wherever daddy goes his journeys."

"Where is daddy?"

"I specs he's smoking his pipe, and saying, 'Thank goodness that child is off my hands!'"

She burst into a merry peal of laughter as she mimicked her father's bass voice.

"But, darling, it will soon be getting dark. Where is your home? Do you live alone with your father?"

"I lives over there somewhere," she said, waving her small hand in an airy fashion over the part of the moor which Honor was going to cross. "I forgets exactly where it is; we only comed yesterday, and I found this lovely sand all by myself."

Then, sitting down by her sand heap, she clasped her hands together and looked up at Honor with grave sweetness.

"I had a muvver once—I really did."

"Did you? How nice! Has she gone to heaven?"

"Yes; she wented when I was a very little girl. She was just like you."

Here she solemnly studied Honor's face with her two big eyes.

"She had a mouf, and chin, and nose, and two eyes, and kontities of curls, just like you."

Honor's brown hair was flying round her face. She put her hand instinctively to it.

"Will you walk back with me? I think I must be going rather near your home."

"I must make France first—that's where frogs live, you know; it's bigger than England, but it isn't so good."

She set to work with her sand again, and Honor racked her brains to think where her house could possibly be. She knew most of the houses round, and was only about a mile from Mrs. Montmorency's house. She felt that she could not leave this child by herself, and yet was doubtful if she could move her at present.

At last, she said with a smile:

"Can you smell tea and hot buttered toast? Is it yours or mine, I wonder? It's very near tea-time."

Fay jumped up and tore out of the hollow as fast as her legs could carry her.

"Mrs. Maciver did promise me a hot apple for my tea."

She had given Honor the clue. Mrs. Maciver kept the village inn, and very often let some of her rooms to lodgers. She was a very quiet, respectable woman, had been a cook in one of the big houses in the neighbourhood, and had, as often is the case, married the butler, who had taken possession of the inn and drunk himself to death in three years' time.

"I know Mrs. Maciver. Wait for me. I can't run as fast as you can, and you're going the wrong way."

Fay stopped irresolutely.

"I rather like getting losted. I'm always doing it. Isn't it funny that I can't never remember in a new country where I comed from? Daddy says dogs is much cleverer than me. I s'pose you know this isn't England. It's Scotland, where men wear frocks and socks, and everybody eats porridge. I saw a man with socks yesterday, but only some of them are dressed like that." She took hold of Honor's hand and chatted on.

The tiny, hot, grubby little hand brought a lump to Honor's throat. She could have thought she was walking with one of her little sisters.

Presently a tall, thin man came striding towards them. Fay at once hid herself behind Honor.

"Don't tell him nothing!" she whispered shrilly. "We'll purtend I isn't here."

As the father came near, Honor saw that he had a thin, nervous face, very dark eyes, and closely cut brown hair. He was dressed in a tweed suit and knickerbockers, and had a pipe in his mouth, which he removed as he took off his cap and accosted Honor.

"I am so much obliged. I have just come out to hunt for my vagabond. She has been absent for two hours."

Fay peeped out mischievously, then sprang with a gleeful laugh into her father's arms.

"I've just been making the world," she said, "and I haven't got it nearly done. But we thought we smelted my hot apple for tea, so I comed along; and this is Madam Pilgrim, for she was pilgriming along the grass when she found me, just like you do, daddy, with your head in the air and your eyes away."

Honor smiled shyly as the man's gaze for one second stayed upon her.

"I am fond of children," she said; "and I thought she might be lost, so I brought her along with me."

"A thousand thanks. What a God-forsaken place this is in winter! I haven't seen it for twenty years, and I can't conceive how educated people can exist in such surroundings."

"I haven't been here many months," said Honor quietly, "but I like it better than London."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Know Knockaburn? That was my home for twenty-five years."

Honor looked at him with interest. Knockaburn was an old Scottish property, only two miles away from Mrs. Montmorency's. At present, there was a Sir Thomas Dodd living there, but his wife found it too lonely, and they were for the most part of the year away from it.

"It is a dear old house," she said.

"A dear old grave," he said sharply; "it buries all who live in it. Think of it! I spent my boyhood and youth there without one single day's change. I beat my wings against my cage for twenty-five years. I look back with amazement now to my powers of endurance and self-control, but when my chains were snapped, I walked out of it into freedom and liberty, and became from choice one of the world's wanderers."

"You let it, I suppose?"

"Good heavens, no! I sold it outright. I have no association with it but of ceaseless gnawing discontent and misery."

"And yet you come to see it again?"

Honor spoke her thought involuntarily.

"I came—" He paused, then glanced down at his child. "Run on, Fay, and tell Mrs. Maciver you're found. I left her wringing her hands."

The child instantly obeyed.

Honor was too interested in this man and his little daughter to heed conventionality. Though she was a perfect stranger to him, he was already laying bare his heart, and it did not seem to her in the least peculiar that he should do so.

"That's what brought me," he said with a nod at the little figure in front of them.

"It was just my luck to be obliged to drag a woman child after me everywhere! She's the plague of my life, and sticks to me like a limpet. I gave her the slip once in London, and thought I'd fixed her up with a decent sort of woman. I was called over by a cablegram from America, and found her at the point of death. She had fretted herself into a fever, and I just arrived in time to prevent her being sent to the workhouse. The woman couldn't be bothered with her, and thought I had left her for good and all on her hands."

"She's a darling child!" said Honor enthusiastically.

"So," he continued dryly, "I bethought me of an old family nurse, and came up here to find her, and yesterday I was told she had died five years ago."

Honor was silent. She hardly knew what to say.

"And now you know my history," he said with a little bitter laugh. "Why wasn't I given a boy, who could have been shipped off to sea?"

"But not at such an age," said Honor. "Your little girl is a mere baby. Surely there must be some school or home where she would be received?"

He stopped still, took off his hat, and raised his head as if to inhale the fresh, breezy air around them.

"I'm not a good man," he said slowly, "but I have vowed that I shall never curb and restrain a nature in the criminal fashion that they restrained mine. She shall not be caged anywhere, least of all in any school. I'm not bad enough to wish my child a fate like mine. And she would die in a month if she were confined in any way. She inherits my love of freedom to her finger-tips. Is this your road? Many thanks for your kindness."

He raised his hat, and strode away into the village inn, and Honor went on home as if in a dream. If her body were in Mrs. Montmorency's well-ordered house for the rest of that day, her heart was with the wandering father and his charming child.

When she slept that night, they mingled in her dreams, and were present in her waking thoughts.

The next afternoon, she was sitting with Mrs. Montmorency in the drawing-room. The latter had just returned from her visit, and was in an unusually good temper. She had learned to like the quiet, useful girl, who had so little regard for her own comfort and convenience, and was so extremely conscientious in the discharge of her duties. Honor was now busy making a lace cap and listening to the account of the visit.

"I assure you, she weighs two stone more than I do, and looks twice my age. We were girls together, and she is two years younger than myself. But she has given way to sloth and self-indulgence, and now her body is an unwieldy encumbrance. I told her that if she had led the active life that I have, she would now be a graceful woman."

"I am always sorry for stout people," said Honor, "but I would rather see a woman stout than a man. Mrs. Montmorency, do you know Knockaburn well? Who used to live there?"

"The Selkirks. Of course, I know the family. We were boys and girls together. Who has been gossiping to you about them?"

"I don't know whether he wishes it known, but I came across a little child yesterday away on the moor playing, and I was bringing her back to the village inn when I met father. He told me Knockaburn used to be his home, and spoke rather bitterly about it."

"That must be Alick. How extraordinary! What is he doing in this part of the world? A thorough ne'er-do-weel, I am afraid. His sister Margaret was my playfellow. He was much younger. I remember we nearly drowned him in a water-butt once."

Mrs. Montmorency smiled at her childish reminiscences. Then she questioned Honor rather closely upon her experience, and finally told her the history of the man.

"His mother was left a widow early in life. She had five daughters, and then this boy, and she ruled her household with a rod of iron. I have heard my father say she was soulless and heartless, and a steel machine in her interior sent the blood with mechanical regularity through her veins! Three of her daughters—high-spirited girls they were—rebelled against her and eloped with the husbands of their choice. Susy, the gentlest of them all, was hurried into her grave by her mother's severity, and Margaret—well, she had grit and purpose, and a will like her mother, and a self-control everyone envied. She was the only one who lived to comfort and care for her mother in her old age.

"Alick was simply villainously brought up. She would never let him go to school—was afraid of trusting him out of her sight. She had tutors for him, and kept him tight to his lessons and her apron-strings till he came of age. He made a desperate struggle to escape from home then, but she circumvented him. She got rid of the bailiff, and forced him to steep himself in the business of the estate. She separated him from the girl he loved, because she foresaw that she would never bend to her rule. She kept the purse. Her husband had left everything to her for life—a most extraordinary will, and, of course, it was her doing—so that Alick was absolutely under her thumb. She died when he was about five-and-twenty, and then he broke loose with a vengeance.

"The place was not entailed, and the next thing we heard was that he had put it up for sale. I know he hated it. He turned his sister adrift—I believe it nearly broke her heart, but her mother had settled a certain income upon her—and then he went off to foreign lands, and we have never seen or heard of him since. I was told he had married. Dear me! I wonder if he has qualms now? Is his child a boy or a girl, do you say? A girl? That's a pity. She will be no incentive to him. I wonder whom he married. He was a dreamy boy—with smouldering fires, we always said, but he kept them well out of sight. I should like to see him again."

"I don't know," said Honor hesitatingly, "whether he would like me to have told you."

"Tuts! Who are you to be made his confidante? And his old friends all around him! I shall walk over to the inn to-morrow. I want to get some honey from Mrs. Maciver. She is always so successful with her bees."